The 74 apartments at the Sunset Terrace complex in Little Rock will be gutted and redone in a monthslong construction project set to begin in October, according to the city's federally funded housing authority and the private developer set to manage the complex.
Some Sunset Terrace residents said they find this hard to believe after being told for years the renovations were coming and after maintenance requests apparently went ignored.
Georgetta Harshaw has lived at Sunset Terrace for five years and said her apartment has only one working electrical outlet. She called the complex's designated phone line for maintenance requests twice in the past five months, but the repair to the other outlets didn't last and no one came back to fix them again, she said.
"I understand trying to save money, but some things really need repairs," Harshaw said.
Sunset Terrace was built in 1941 and has had no "major modifications" since then, so the Metropolitan Housing Alliance will secure enough private funds this year for the planned interior overhaul, board chairman Kenyon Lowe said.
The alliance has been working with Gorman and Co. Inc., a Wisconsin development and investment company, to convert Sunset Terrace from public housing to a Section 8 housing-choice voucher program. The conversion process gives housing authorities access to private funding sources that make large-scale maintenance and renovations possible and are meant to improve living conditions for tenants.
The conversion program, Rental Assistance Demonstration, is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and was created in 2012 to give the public housing sector a new funding source after decades of underfunding. Private ownership allows housing authorities to enter into contracts with banks and finance companies -- whether through loans, tax credits, grants or a combination -- to receive the millions of dollars needed for plumbing, flooring, roofing, electrical and other repairs and maintenance.
Gorman already owns and manages the Fred W. Parris, Cumberland and Jesse Powell towers, three Rental Assistance Demonstration conversions in Little Rock. The Metropolitan Housing Alliance maintains ownership of the land while Gorman controls the leases for the buildings.
Stephens Apartments and Central High Apartments also will be redone as part of the same Rental Assistance Demonstration deal as Sunset Terrace, Lowe said, and the total of 87 units should be completely renovated 18 to 22 months after the project begins.
The housing authority will continue to be responsible for management and maintenance at Sunset Terrace until October, when the Rental Assistance Demonstration deal is expected to close and Gorman will then take over, President and CEO Brian Swanton said.
Meanwhile, Sunset Terrace residents approached the housing authority board months ago with concerns about unfulfilled maintenance and repair requests, and Harshaw said nothing has changed.
"I'm just frustrated that they're not trying to do anything out here," she said.
RESIDENT COMPLAINTS
Harshaw has trouble breathing and would use a CPAP machine if she had enough working electrical outlets to power it and other necessities, but instead she relies on three inhalers and her family's supervision, and sometimes she wakes up gasping for breath, she said.
She also has a broken window and a leak in the wall or floor that drenched part of her living room carpet, she said.
"The apartments get worse and worse, and we can't get anybody to do repairs on anything," Harshaw said.
Lorene Williams has lived at Sunset Terrace for almost 16 years, and she said she has heard renovations were coming ever since she moved in. Her apartment's air conditioning needs to be fixed, and part of the floor near the front door is sinking, she said.
She called the same maintenance request line that Harshaw did and no one responded, she said.
"There's just so much that needs to be done around here, and they ain't doing nothing about it," Williams said.
A group of Sunset Terrace residents spoke to the housing authority board at its November 2021 regular meeting with the same concerns. Jamie Adkins told the board the lack of maintenance was consistent and ongoing.
"If it's something small that can be handled by management, we have no one to turn to," she said. "We can't be somewhere without structure and management."
The few repairs that get done do not last, and "things are just being patched up, not actually fixed," Stacie Brown said.
"We are tired," she said. "We have been waiting and waiting, and we're very tired."
Commissioner Leta Anthony said previously the internal demolition of Sunset Terrace units should start in the first three months of 2022. Harshaw and Williams said Wednesday that they expected this to come to fruition and had not been told why the project was not underway and they had not been relocated.
Lowe said Thursday that the process of finalizing the Rental Assistance Demonstration deal had been delayed at the federal level. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development did not finish reviewing the transaction when the housing authority expected, he said.
Harshaw said she has the impression that the upcoming renovations are the reason the housing authority has not fulfilled maintenance requests at Sunset Terrace. Lowe said the real reason is residents have not gone through the proper process to get things fixed, even after calling the right phone number for maintenance requests.
He told residents at the November meeting that they needed to form and maintain a Sunset Terrace resident council to get their complaints officially recognized by the housing authority and the federal housing department. There was no such resident council as of Thursday, he said.
Poor or unfulfilled maintenance should have led residents to call the Sunset Terrace property manager, housing authority Executive Director Ericka Benedicto or Lowe himself instead of taking their complaints elsewhere, he said.
"If they choose to short-circuit the process, that's on them," he said.
RELOCATION, REFURBISHMENT
The construction process at the Sunset Terrace, Stephens and Central complexes will be what Swanton calls "rolling rehab," in which a few households at a time will be relocated to other apartments while their units are being redone.
Swanton said Sunset has some vacant units that can be used for this purpose, and Lowe said residents will not have to move far away so that children will not have to switch schools.
The Rental Assistance Demonstration deal will cover all moving and utilities expenses for the residents under the program's Uniform Relocation Act, which also says relocation should not last longer than 12 months.
The vast majority of the funding for the refurbishing of the three complexes will come from private capital, but the housing authority will spend $4.75 million of its own capital funds for the project, Lowe said.
The housing choice vouchers at up to 25% of the 87 units at Sunset, Stephens and Central will be combined with those administered by Section 18, which allows for demolition of aged buildings. The housing authority board approved this aspect of the Rental Assistance Demonstration plan at its meeting in May.
Gorman and the housing authority are looking for contractors to begin construction as soon as the financing deal closes next month, Swanton said.
He and other Gorman staff have met with Sunset Terrace residents over the past year to discuss the project, he said, so he expects them to be well-informed about the upcoming relocation and construction. He also said residents seem excited about the project.
"The general consensus is they're waiting for the transformation to happen," Swanton said.
However, Harshaw and Williams said they are irritated because they have heard for years about the housing authority's plans to renovate the complex, and they are not convinced the plan will come to fruition now.
"Every time they say something, it's always a different story when they're going to start," Harshaw said.